Tours

Great travel that’s smaller and perfectly formed

Amanda Angus

Going on a group journey with fewer people can develop huge camaraderie and build shared memories, says Saga expert Holiday Hunter, Stuart Douglass-Lee

Our small-group tours are proving incredibly popular. It seems our customers really love them – and it is easy to see why. The camaraderie of a smaller group can be absolutely wonderful, really special.

After a day or two journeying together, you can find yourself sharing in-jokes with your fellow travellers as well as the tour guide, and you will understand what makes each other tick – so you might find yourself noticing things they’ll like and pointing them out, and in turn they might make sure you don’t miss out on something you have expressed an interest in.

It adds an extra dimension to the trip, and can enhance your holiday memories hugely, especially if you stay in touch after you return home.

Each time you meet up, you can relive the adventure with someone who will appreciate the perfect you-hadto- be-there moments.

On all our tours we make sure our customers move at a pace they are comfortable with, but it’s a lot easier to find that pace within a smaller group. It’s also easier for the tour guide to judge the mood of the day, and perhaps spend a bit longer in an especially interesting location, as the consensus dictates.

It gives the guide a certain flexibility to tailor the experience that little bit extra, which can make a huge difference to the overall holiday. And if you are a group of friends who like travelling together, you could potentially have the whole tour to yourselves – what an incredible holiday that would be...

So you can see why I was not all that surprised to find out exactly how well loved our niche smallgroup tours are. And because at Saga we are very much focused on providing choice for our customers, we started thinking about how we could roll out the small-group experience across other tours within our range.

I am always trying to find a good balance for our customers – finding a holiday that ticks all the boxes while still focusing on value for money is my constant goal.

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Travelling in a larger tour group naturally keeps prices low; the more people to share the cost of transport, the more affordable it becomes.

For anyone who wants to see all the sights but does not want to have to spend more than necessary, a larger tour group is ideal.

And, of course, some people simply prefer travelling in a bigger group – the more you have surrounding you, the more likely you are to find people with common interests, so the more likely you are make new friends.

That is why, when considering how to enable more people to enjoy a small-group experience, we knew we could not just limit all our tour group numbers. It simply would not suit everyone.

Experiencing it all accompanied by fewer travellers gives you more of a sense of adventure

So instead, we decided to reduce the group numbers on selected departure dates. From 2017 onwards, for a relatively small premium, people will be able to choose to travel in a smaller group on a number of our worldwide tours to destinations such as South Africa, Vietnam, India and more.

I must admit I’m particularly excited about the small-group departure on the Uzbekistan tour – this, to me, is the ideal destination for a small group as it gives you the chance to really linger and soak up the unique atmosphere of many of the sites that might catch your attention.

Experiencing it all accompanied by fewer travellers gives you more of a sense of adventure, and you are able to get more of a glimpse into the culture. Here the locals are so unused to Westerners that you are as much of a joy to them as they are to you.

I see small-group travel as a bit like car-sharing versus getting a limo. You still comfortably get where you are going in the carshare, but for a slightly higher price the limo adds that little bit extra to the adventure!